Oct 28, 2016
Griffith hoping to become regular among Leafs
The Toronto Maple Leafs have already been defined by their young talent this season. On Thursday night, they unveiled even more of it when Seth Griffith finally made his Maple Leafs debut.
TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have already been defined by their young talent this season. On Thursday night, they unveiled even more of it when Seth Griffith finally made his Maple Leafs debut.
Waived by the Boston Bruins on Oct. 10, Griffith, 23, was scooped up by a Toronto management team that includes his former coach with the OHL’s London Knights – and now the Maple Leafs assistant general manager - Mark Hunter.
A healthy scratch for the first six games of his tenure, Griffith got the call at last on Thursday to suit up against the Florida Panthers. The right wing took Peter Holland’s spot on the fourth line with Matt Martin and Ben Smith.
“It’s tough,” Griffith said of getting into his first game after an extended break. “But I think I just tried to keep it simple, playing with guys who want to work hard every shift. I think it was a good line for me to jump into right away and I felt pretty good actually. We’ve been going pretty hard in practice so it helps when you jump into a game like that.”
The Wallaceburg, Ont., native grew up cheering for the Maple Leafs and aspired towards wearing the blue and white himself one day. In his first outing with the club Griffith played a team-low 9:09, with a stint on the power play. Still, he made an impact. Putting his great speed on display early, Griffith made a number of positive plays in the Panthers’ zone right out of the gate. Even without high-skill players on his line, Griffith found the seams through traffic to set up his line mates in front of the net and won puck battles to keep plays alive. He recorded a 70 per cent Corsi For, pacing all of Toronto’s forwards.
A point-per-game player in the OHL and also with the AHL’s Providence Bruins, Griffith had a superb chance of his own to light the lamp in the third period, taking a feed from Auston Matthews that he couldn’t quite bury.
“[I felt] really good. I was seeing the ice pretty well,” Griffith said. “I think our line did really well, especially in the first and third periods with minimizing [Florida]’s chances and we got some breaks offensively too. Hopefully with chemistry and a couple more practices and games under our belt, we’ll be able to capitalize on those.”
At 5-foot-9, Griffith has been criticized for being one-dimensional, a skilled forward who can produce offensively but who lacks the strength to be a full-time NHL player. His dynamic game up front put him in the top-three in scoring for the Knights in each of his three full seasons there, and helped London win two OHL championships. Drafted in the fifth round in 2012 by the Bruins, Griffith played 30 games and posted 10 points (six goals, four assists) for them in 2014-15 but was relegated primarily to the AHL last season. His 77 points in 57 games in Providence was second-highest in the league.
Given all the success Griffith had with Hunter in the past, it’s no surprise to see the Maple Leafs add him to their youthful mix. Many of Griffith’s contemporaries in the dressing room need to flesh out their game at the NHL level too. Head coach Mike Babcock has said Toronto’s roster was easier to make than most because of where they’re at in their rebuild, but whether Griffith sticks around now will depend on how hard he works at improving.
“He made plays. He was on the puck,” Babcock said of Griffith’s debut. “A big knock on Seth is he can score but he can’t play 200 feet and isn’t competitive without the puck. We’ve talked about that. It’s real simple - he’s got to be competitive without the puck and be playing 200 feet and everything else is a bonus for him. So ball’s in his court.”